grammar girl

ast month we were scouring the world wide web for a new letterpress company to bring in as part of our “Out-of-Towners” collection.  (If you didn’t know, the Out-of-Towners are a constantly rotating crew of small studio stationers from outside of Oregon.  We add them into our usual local letterpress lines for variety and to keep you wondering what you’ll see next.)  You can imagine our surprise when we stumbled across the super cool Oddball Press in our very own Ohio.  When we lived there, the closest thing to letterpress was the seal on your birth certificate from the notary public.  My how things change!

We received our order this week and along with the awesome cards that came (click here to see our favorite one), we also got two black and white prints that present a fantastical view of the ABCs and 123s.  So intricately awesome, we recommend you come by yourselves and see them up close.  We had our neighbors down at Luke’s Frame Shop put one of each design in a simple black frame to help show them off. Nice, huh?

eriously.  Who doesn’t love a locket?  Perfect for friends or lovers.  Traditional yet trendy, sentimental but not sticky sweet.  Fill them with faces from the past or current crushes.  We just can’t think of one good reason NOT to own a locket.  Perhaps you already do.  If not, you may want to peruse the new collection from our gal Jesseca of Paper Treasure.  Here are just a few:

ortland is an amazing place.  We love our city.  We love it so much that we simultaneously want everyone to move here (because it’s so awesome) and no one to move here (because we want it all to ourselves).  There is delicious food at every counter, a friendly smile on every countenance and creativity around every corner.  What’s not to love?

One of our favorite vendors, Lark Press, must feel the same way we do because they’ve created this super cute collection of letterpress cards.  Each one celebrates Portland in its own way.  There is the iconic St. John’s Bridge, a cityscape along the Willamette River, the Vaux’s Swift gathering at Chapman School chimney and our favorite, a US map with a heart over Portland.  We think these are the perfect way to send a little bit of the Portland we love to those who aren’t lucky enough to live here themselves.

o, whenever we think of handbags, we think of our best friend, Jami Curl.  You see, back when we and Jami shared our no-bedroom studio apartment, we found ourselves daydreaming a lot. But back then, it wasn’t about cupcakes and collectibles.  Oh no.  It was about shoes and handbags.  We were shoes.  Jami was handbags.  That was what we spent all of our expendable income on.   In fact, that is still where we spend it.

(Don’t believe us? Just ask Jami to see her Chloe bag.  Seriously. That thing is outrageous!)

The point is, in our book, best friends and bags go hand in hand.  In fact, a good handbag is almost as useful as a best friend.  It boosts your self-confidence and helps you hold it all together.  It goes shoe shopping with you, it beats up the guy who won’t keep his hands off of you and it will never, ever leave your side, unless you leave it first.

If you’re looking for a best friend, you’re on your own.  But if you’re looking for a handbag, we can help.  These wool beauties from local company Queen Bee are our top pick.  They come in two sizes, with either a leaf or a posey design.  They have a super stylish shape and a roomy interior with pockets for your goodies.  And while we haven’t tried it yet, we’re pretty sure they can keep a secret.

ell, it has been exactly 2 months and 3 days since our last post.  That is just disgraceful. We should be ashamed of ourselves! But we aren’t. November was a crazy month for us privately and December was a crazy month for us publicly. Frankly, blogging was the last thing on our mind.

That said, all ended well and we are totally excited to start writing the first chapter of 2010.  Speaking of writing…did you hear about our new year’s resolution?  We’re going to start writing in cursive again!

While you wouldn’t know it these days, we used to have awesome swirls and slants.  Honest.  Our mom has 8 years worth of “excellence in penmanship” awards disintegrating in a JC Penny box in the back of her closet to prove it.  We’ve recently realized the true damage caused by our computer (and keyboard) guided culture.  Our handwriting has deteriorated so much that last month when we used cursive to write our brother’s birthday card, our greetings were stunted by awkward stops and starts as we tried to write a capital “B” and struggled to remember how to connect a “w” to an “r”.  Talk about something to be ashamed of…

Luckily, we recently stumbled upon some amazing old calligraphy pens to help us (and you!) put pen to paper again and regain the former glory of our handwritten youth.